Mithrandur wrote:In fact almost any tool can be used as a weapon I believe, and personally I'd love to see more of these impromptu weapons being made use of in game, though it'll probably never happen because they aren't codedly 'the best' which is all anyone ever seems to want.

I think the problem rests more in a lack of alternate 'good' options. If we want variety, we need to add things like piercing swords, and slashing polearms(bills come to mind as the simplest).

If we want tactical choices, we either need to NOT add variety, or add something like Gobbo's 'perks' suggested/Songweaver's previous system of different weapons doing different things at different skill-levels. If (most) every weaponskill has access to every damagetype, taking a different weaponskill has less and less effect. Maybe that's what you want, rebalancing weapons, and maybe it's not. A progged(or coded) way to differentiate weapons within a group may be what you want, and maybe it's not.

biral wrote:I'd just like to speak my mind. Lately ALMOST everyone is screaming REALISM over game mechanics and theme. I know someone quoted somewhere that the characters in this setting are NOT your average joe today. They were much hardier and capable of a lot more. So please tell me why people cannot strike as fast with LIGHT-bludgeons and why you're all crying and throwing your toys out the cot so that admins can nerf bludgeons wind AND light-bludgeons speed? Jarlhen, your shortswords aren't going to get anymore better than lightbludgeons, you WON'T be some samurai/knight. You will get players who can wear you down faster with their nimble weapons. This is a GAME where NOTHING at -all- in it screams realism, so please, stop trying to strike the ball home with realism on bludgeons.

Vikings used light bludgeons, tell me about how their weapons shouldn't have killed anyone who was wielding anything else?

I'm not sure what I did here. I'm not advocating anything. But there were some discussion in regards to how weapons worked. That's how weapons worked. I don't know what to tell you. The main reason for the usage of maces and warhammers were that they were anti-armor weapons. Due to the fact that they are top heavy it means that every swing is done with less control than you would with a sword. That's just the simple truth. If someone is Aragorn he would experience the same thing. A sword will simply always be a more balanced weapon. This in turn allows the wielder to operate it with much greater ease.

And I'm pretty sure no one saying that a bludgeon wouldn't kill anyone. That's never been the debate. Though a percussion weapon will generally not kill a person through one or two swings as opposed to an edged weapon. Spears, axes, swords, are all much more useful against a lightly armored opponent than a mace would be. However, these weapons would struggle against armor based on deflection (so heavy armor). Maces and warhammers were designed so that as much force as possible would be concentrated on one spot, which is why you see warhammers with points on the "flat" end and why you have flanged maces. So the weapon didn't need to penetrate the armor in order to hurt the other person. That's simply physics.

I mean if we assume that Tolkien weapons worked the way weapons worked, that armor worked the way armor worked and so on, that's just the reality of things. Has nothing to do with the strength of the person. A mace will always be easier to aim with, will always be cheap, be easy to learn and it will do well against heavier armor. A sword will always be better balanced, cause superior damage to lighter armor, be faster and more versatile. Again, these aren't opinions, these are just simple facts as dictated by about 4,000 years of documentation, history, physics and design.

There's no need to get overly complicated about things, and no one is advocating that. It's pretty simple stuff that's very easily represented by the in-game code. Personally I'm happy with how it works right now. I believe a professional warrior should have several sets of weapons and skills, as that makes an awful lot of sense both realistically and in the Tolkien world.